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Remembering the 1996 Marcopper Mine Disaster

By atm.admin - Posted on March 29th, 2010
Photo courtesy of Myke Magalang, MACEC 
 
Remembering the 1996 Marcopper Mine Disaster
 

 

 TheMarcopper Mining Corporation(Marcopper) started its mining operation in Marinduque Island in 1969.[1]Marcopper, a joint venture of Placer Dome[2],a Canadian mining company,  (40%) and the Philippine Government,started its mining operations at the Mt. Tapian ore deposit, where copper concentrate,containing gold and silver was produced in the deposit.[3]

 
On March 24 1996, the Marcopper’sopen pit burst open and released 2 to 3 million cubic meters of mine tailinginto the Boac River in Marinduque killing marine life in the 26-kilometer waterway and floodedfarmlands and villages along its banks. Specifically, the incident’s impactsinclude the following: evacuation of 1200 residents;seriously affected approximately 700 families from 5 villages by loss of mostriver crossings;loss of road connections;inundation of between 6 and 10 hectares of cropland used for banana and otheragricultural purposes; deposition of tailings in the upper sections of theMakulapnit and Boac Rivers; loss of aquatic life, productivity and beneficial use of the rivers for domestic andagricultural purposes; and cleanup cost in US$80 million[4].
 
Anumber of cases has since been filed against Marcopper and Placer Dome and its officers, civil(3 cases with 1 international civil case), administrative and criminalcases (12 cases integrated inone).  However, the people of Marinduquehas yet to attain justice. In 2005, the provincial government of Marinduque filed a landmark suit against Placer Dome and Barrick Gold Corp. for dumping millions of tons of minetailings into the Boac River in 1996.[5] The province at least $100 million from the company for the rehabilitation of the area,including the rivers of Marinduque.Placer Dome is also beingurged to pay for economic damages, including compensation for lost property andincome opportunities of the people, and for health problems caused by thetoxicity of the mine tailings.[6]
 

Thirteenyears after mine tailings spilled into the Boac River, leaving it biologically dead and endangeringthousands of human lives and public health, Marcopper Gold owes the Province ofMarinduqe Php 1.05 billion of unpaid property tax and Marinduqueñosare still saddled with millions of cubic meters of toxic open-pit copper mine waste[7]


 


 


[1]http://www.mineralresourcesforum.org/incidents/Marinduque/index.htm

[2] http://services.inquirer.net/print/print.php?article_id=20090402-197491

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

 

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid. 

[7] Ibid.

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COMMENT RULES:

Hi everyone,

I'm the national coordinator of Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM), the owner of this site.

We will always respect views and opinions posted on this site, as much as we encourage open discussion and intelligent debate on the issue of mining. ATM has its stand on this issue very clearly, and we welcome the comments from those who do not agree with us.

However, we have observed that in the past few days, this forum has gone way beyond acceptable behavior of netiquette.

I will request and strongly encourage all posters to at least follow the following rules:

1. Be civil. Basic courtesy and privacy norms should be practised by posters in this forum. Make your mom at least proud by showing you still remember to be polite, even if you're not required to say "po" or "opo" in every post you make. We wouldn't mind that either, if you do so. Then again, I am assuming here that you're already an adult.

2. Personal attacks will not be tolerated. This also applies to flaming. Just in case you don't know what flaming is, its deliberately insulting or personally ranting against a poster (or a thread) simply because you are losing the arguments.

3. Avoid being anonymous. Since you have enough time to post long comments, you would at least have a few seconds to type even an alias. You also help people conclude that you are not a paid hack from a PR firm by Intex (or any other mining company)

4. Do not shout in the forums. Do not use ALL CAPS in your posts. A single exclamation point should also suffice.

We will observe the forum in the next few days. Should these rules be disregarded, we will transform this into a minimally-moderated forum. We hope we will avoid the situation that we will decide to make this a closely and strictly moderated forum. We value everyone's insights so much.

We'll check up again on this new rules after a short while. Of course, we expect the Intex ECC to be revoked in a few days. In this case, I suspect that the "excitement" in this thread would have died down.

Jaybee Garganera
National Coordinator
ATM
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